


Rumor Has It

by valeriange



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Gossip, M/M, News Media, Other, Rumors
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2020-11-27 02:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20941025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valeriange/pseuds/valeriange
Summary: Ratchet was thrust into the spotlight after becoming the conjunx of elite seeker Pharma. While his senator-berating exploits had made news before, he never expected there would be any long-lasting interest in him otherwise.And then the Dead End scandal hit the front page.





	1. Chapter 1

Viewfinder stared down at the twisted cables and bent plating of his knee. An experimental twitch of the joint showed sparks flying from the wound and an abominable creaking sound echoing into the cool evening air.

The bot let out a small sigh. His partner – the actual reporter – had run off at the first sign of the burly security mech outside the recently attacked nightclub squaring them up. He had taken a brutal kick to the leg to send him scurrying off as well, and was now alone on the outskirts of Rodion’s Dead End as night quickly approached. A warrior-class ex-Enforcer versus a tiny mini-bot with a camera alt-mode was hardly a fair fight.

It seemed like the nightclub had finally finished prepping for the night’s guests. Viewfinder was still sitting on the curb where he had fallen when the warrior-class security guard re-emerged from the doors, the look on his faceplates souring when he realized the unwelcomed bot had yet to leave.

“Not good to be here at night,” the warrior-class bot grumbled. His vocalizer was staticky, and Viewfinder could barely make out the words.

Viewfinder gave him a piercing glare. “Well, I can’t exactly walk away!”

The bot cast a disinterested look down to his dislocated knee joint. He sighed and said, “There’s a clinic less than half a mile down this main road. You can’t miss it; it’ll be the only one with the lights on. Primus knows I’ve carried enough mechs there to know he stays about all night.”

Viewfinder maintained his scowl. “I don’t have any credits on me.”

“He doesn’t take credits.”

“Well, I’m not interested in seeing some… some witch doctor. I want to go to a real hospital.”

The warrior-class bot was becoming visible frustrated. Viewfinder could hear the growl of his engine beneath his heavy armor. “He _is_ a real doctor. I think he’s some big-shot in Iacon, because he’s always gone when something’s going down there.”

Viewfinder had to snort. “You’re telling me there’s a licensed medic out here, in the Dead End, patching up gutter-mechs like you for free?”

Rather than respond to his question, the bot said, “I will carry you down there myself to get you away from here.”

He wasn’t exactly in a position to say no. Reluctantly, Viewfinder raised a servo for the mech to pull him up, only to find himself swamped in heavily armored grey arms, a worrying distance away from the ground. Viewfinder’s servos scrabbled for a hold on the mech’s flared collar plating; the bot grunted when one of his small fingers caught on one of his thick neck cables.

Crossing half a mile was surprisingly quick in the arms of a mech who probably traversed that distance in about ten steps or so. As the sky above Cybertron grew darker, the large mech’s steps became longer and faster. Viewfinder did not want to find out what in the Dead End could make a mech his size wary about walking back in the dark. Luckily, the faint golden light spilling out from beneath a shoddily-sealed doorway further up ahead in the otherwise dark street told Viewfinder they had almost arrived.

For something so apparently important to the residents of the Dead End, the clinic seemed small on the outside and just as run-down as any of the other buildings. The few windows the building once had were boarded up with heavy sheets of metal all down the road. There were five doors to this building segment, indicating it might have once been a conglomeration of small offices. If the doctor had taken up residence in one, it must not be a very large place. The door with the light streaming out from under it was only doing so because the base of the door was partly crumpled in a mess of frayed metal; not big enough for any bot, even a mini-bot, to slip in, but enough to let the light pour into the blackened road. In hazy red spray-paint, the medic’s symbol was plastered on the rusting side of the building beside the door.

The warrior-class bot bent down and placed Viewfinder on the pavement, supporting his injured side with one broad servo. The crushing weight of his palm almost pushed Viewfinder to his knees, but the bot didn’t seem to notice. He delivered two striking hits to the door that made the metal shudder under the force. The sound echoed bleakly down the empty street.

Viewfinder glanced around, seeking burning yellow or red optics looking in from the shadows. He rarely entered the Dead End, but as the anti-Functionist movement grew in other places like Tarn and Kaon, Inside Authority had taken to examining the pits. While it was a Cybertron-wide organization, the idea of outsourcing reporting work to Tarn or Kaon when there were perfectly good sob stories right outside of Iacon seemed like extra work. The Dead End captivated Iaconian residents as easily as inner-Iaconian gossip, much to Viewfinder’s misfortune.

The door opened with a loud creak that definitely attracted any mech who hadn’t heard the knocks. Viewfinder found himself temporarily blinded by the searing white lights coming from within the well-lit, open room.

“Got one for you, boss. Sorry,” the bot said.

“Don’t call me boss,” a voice that must have belonged to the medic said testily.

As his optics slowly reset – the side-effect of having so many visual upgrades and sub-processors – he found himself being shoved forward by the bot, into the servo of a white and red mech who towered over him much like the warrior-class behind him.

Critical blue optics swept over him. “How’d you get one this early anyhow?” the medic’s rough voice asked. “Thought you didn’t open for another few kliks.”

Viewfinder heard the bot shifting uneasily; his plating ground together with every slight movement, and Viewfinder was just glad he wasn’t one of those microphone mini-bots, or it would have been hell on his audials.

“Some nice reporter femme came sniffing around, and you know Shiftlock don’t like those kinds, so…” There was the horrible sound of gears locking together as the bot lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “I wasn’t aiming for the little one.”

The medic made a gruff “hmm” sound and peered down at Viewfinder. His optics had fully reset, but staring up at the medic, surrounding by flaring white lights, was doing no favors to his vision.

“You owe me, Metaljaw,” the medic finally said. “I had to put down a good datapad for this.”

“Don’t worry, boss,” Metaljaw said. “I’m sure we’ll have an interesting fight tonight that’ll spice it up.”

Once again, the medic snorted. With the servo beneath Viewfinder’s shoulder joint, he hauled him inside while keeping the weight off his injured side. The door slid shut with a metallic whine behind them, and Viewfinder found himself alone with the mysterious medic of the Dead End.

The clinic itself was nice. After seeing the outside, Viewfinder realized some of the interior walls must have been demolished, because there was now a hallway in the back leading to various rooms that must have once been individual offices. A few chairs in varying conditions lined the edges of the light grey linoleum floor. A large white desk with a black surface, stacked high with data-pads, was at the back center of the room. Utilitarian white lights glimmered from the ceiling, and the walls had been coated in a new layer of plain white, uniform throughout the building.

As the medic helped him toward the large hallway to the left, he cast a glance to the side. He caught a faint view of a seemingly well-stocked kitchen behind a half-opened door, and a hallway that led further in that direction.

“You live here?” Viewfinder asked.

The medic grunted, opening a door and helping Viewfinder to a medical slab. “I live at whichever hospital I’m working at,” he said.

Viewfinder watched him pull various tools from the cabinet and lay them on the countertop. “Where are you from?”

“Iacon.”

Viewfinder would have to run his image against a database of Iaconian medics when he returned to headquarters. “Why Rodion, then?”

The medic fixed him with a hard glare, and Viewfinder fought against recoiling. “You’re not a gutter-mech,” he said.

“No,” Viewfinder said. “I’m a camera.”

“Lucky you,” he groused. “I’m a medic. I treat the gutter-mechs here.”

“Who pays you?” Viewfinder asked.

“What is this, an interrogation?” He knelt down and began working on Viewfinder’s knees. “I don’t need anybody’s slagging money.”

So he was well-off, then. That narrowed Viewfinder’s search down. Iacon was home to literally hundreds of medics, nearly all painted red and white, attending or working at the Iaconian Academy of Science’s Medical School. Even more remained as personal employees to the Houses of Senators or lobbyists. There was no shortage of medics in Iacon.

But Rodion? Rodion was a poor enough district, left to sour in Iacon’s shadow, that it had no medics. They had some clubs, a few restaurants, a bustling prostitute business and a large hand in mech trafficking and gang violence, but no clinics. If there was one, it would surely be raided by mechs looking for a quick shanix or hounded by leakers seeking a fix.

But this? This was nice. This was _Iaconian_, right in the middle of the Dead End. It was clean and open and _not destroyed_. It was, seemingly, impossible. Yet this medic had done it, and Viewfinder – and the rest of Inside Authority – had no clue about it. How had something so monumental, so predatory to the ideas of the Functionists who controlled the Senate, gone unnoticed?

“This must be illegal,” Viewfinder murmured.

The medic didn’t even look up. “It’s the Dead End,” he said. “Nothing’s illegal here.”

Viewfinder watched the medic’s hands as he worked. He was quick, and Viewfinder cataloged the movements to analyze later. Was he mostly self-taught or professionally schooled? Forged medic hands or a cold-constructed bot with a talent? As Viewfinder watched, he found it hard to believe this was the skill of anyone other than a forged medic, but that just made less sense. Forged medics were the highest demand. There was such a surplus of available work in Iacon alone for a forged medic that they wouldn’t need to burn off excess energy in the Dead End. So why?

Viewfinder asked as much out loud.

Again, the medic just replied with a derisive sigh. A moment passed, and as the feeling slowly returned to Viewfinder’s knee as he aligned the cables back in their proper places, he said, “Because the Senate doesn’t do slag.”

“Isn’t the schooling of forged medics paid for by the Senate?”

“Yeah, so we can act for their own personal use.” He tossed a tool to the side and picked another one up from the floor beside him. “I don’t plan on being anybody’s lapdog, no matter what title they have.”

“So why here?” Viewfinder asked.

“You _are_ interrogating me.”

“It’s in my coding,” Viewfinder protested. “I’m a reporting bot. I was made to tag along with reporters and help them with their jobs.”

“Put it like this: If the Senate won’t fix the mess they made with these bots here, then my Senate-funded medical education will do it.”

He began putting the plating back on Viewfinder’s knee when a timid knock sounded at the room’s door. Viewfinder looked up to see a yellow and grey bot – missing a good third or so of his plating and covered in dust – standing there.

“Busy, doc?” he asked.

“Make it quick.”

“Outburst ripped out his IV line again.”

The medic sighed as he snapped the last bit of plating back into place and stood up. “You can take care of the paint scuffs on your own time and coin. Now get out. I’ve got places to be tomorrow and the last thing I need is to be here all night.”

Viewfinder hopped down off the table and waited for the medic to enter the hallway. The grey and yellow bot stood uncertainly in the doorway. Finally, he said to Viewfinder, “You must be new. I’ll show you out.”

And not a minute later, Viewfinder found himself locked out of the Dead End Clinic, once again facing the roughly-painted medic symbol on the side of the rusting wall.

He activated his camera technology and took a picture.

* * *

“You left me!” Viewfinder exclaimed as he walked into Inside Authority headquarters. Illustra was standing beside her desk console, turning off the lamp as she prepared to leave. “Last night! You just _left me _in the Dead End!

“Oh. Right.” She shrugged as she walked out from behind the console. “Good to see you’re all right.”

“I wasn’t, actually,” Viewfinder said.

Illustra gave him a quick, skeptical once-over.

“I wasn’t!” Viewfinder said. “But you’ll never believe this, Illustra.”

While he and Illustra traversed to the city square for the Senate’s newest speech on who-cares because of some-scandal-already-forgotten, he told the femme about the security guard carrying him to the clinic, the medic who opened it already on good terms with him, the clean and polished state of the interior, in traditional Iaconian style. She listened with a frown on her faceplates.

“You didn’t recognize the medic?” she asked.

“No, but we haven’t exactly done many stories on run-of-the-mill medics. I mean, hospital and Senate gossip, yes, but those are mostly based on rumors with no pictures to accompany them. You may know him, but I don’t.”

She made a thoughtful sound. “A clinic in the Dead End of Rodion run by a forged medic on his own coin. This would be a brilliant story.”

“That’s what I thought! So I took this.” He showed Illustra the picture of the side of the building, where the medic’s symbol was scrawled.

She closed the picture when the Senate’s speaker stepped up to introduce the day’s topic and speakers. Something about Nominus Prime. Probably not important.

In a whisper, Illustra said, “This is good. It shows the symbol proportional to the door, so a reader could see how large it is. If this was a false symbol, or a trap, someone would have marked it out by now. But it’s very clear. Never been marked through or erased.”

A new voice began speaking, and Illustra’s helm quickly shot up as she feigned attention. Viewfinder could see the boredom in her optics. He glanced back down at the picture, as though peering at it longer would reveal some previously hidden secret. It was hardly his best work, but it had been the dead of night and he had been eager to escape the Dead End. Perhaps—

Illustra elbowed him. Her voice was light with amusement as she said, “Hey, Viewfinder, do you think the medic could’ve been _Ratchet of Vaporex, Chief Medical Office of the Senate_?”

He knew she was mocking him, but curiosity overwhelmed him and he couldn’t help but look up.

There, on the platform beside the speaking Senator, was the medic from the Dead End.


	2. Chapter 2

Pharma entered the Iaconian Hospital exactly five minutes after his shift was supposed to start, which was remarkably earlier than he arrived most days. It wasn’t as though there had been any entertainment at home, since Ratchet had taken up a shift in another hospital Pharma didn’t bother to remember the name of as soon as he had been freed from the Senate’s grasp. Pharma couldn’t imagine still doing the medial labor of an average doctor when he worked for the Senate directly, but it kept Ratchet busy and a busy Ratchet didn’t argue with Pharma, so he was content.

When he saw the small gaggle of reporters at the front desk, he sighed and accepted it and walked by. They likely had a high-profile patient somewhere within the walls, and at some point today, Pharma would drop in with a dashing smile and ‘find’ something one of the other doctors missed and win an influential supporter. No one dared argue with the diagnosis of the second-best medic on Cybertron.

He felt the optics of the reporters locking onto him as he entered the lift to head up to the surgery floors. He didn’t bother glancing around and flashing them his trademark smirk – it was far too early in the morning for that. Besides, he had had so many encounters with paparazzi from growing up in an elite Seeker House that they probably had loads of images to fall back on.

He stepped off the lift onto the surgery floor and immediately found himself the subject of a dozen more optics. Nurses and medical drones paused briefly to take him in before quickly hurrying along their way. The hallway emptied before his eyes.

Pharma sighed. Ratchet, then.

He had grown up in the spotlight and maintained that attention throughout medical school. Ratchet did not, but he was thrust into it when he quickly climbed the ranks – almost impossibly fast – and found himself the young medic serving the Senate. Conjunxing Pharma just brought further attention onto the both of them. In a time of such upheaval, simple gossip was much desired, and Pharma – and by extension, Ratchet – were no strangers to being its subject.

Ratchet’s nature hadn’t changed in the slightest with his entrance into the public gaze. His coarseness and snappish manner didn’t soften in any way. The older bots found him exasperating. The average bot only cared about the interesting gossip from whatever he had snapped at a Senator lately. The younger bots adored him in a way that made Pharma fear for the future of Cybertron.

Pharma entered his office and shut the door before any muttering could pick up again.

“Oh, good, this is your office.”

Pharma started. He looked up to see a lithe femme with orange plating standing in front of his desk, a data-pad in her hands.

Before he could say anything, she began speaking. “My designation is Illustra. I’m a reporter with Inside Authority. I was wondering if I could get a statement from you regarding the recent news about your conjunx.”

Of course it was about Ratchet.

Pharma sighed. “What’s he said to who now?”

Illustra cocked an eyebrow ridge. “You haven’t heard yet?”

“If I troubled myself with every story regarding the Chief Medical Officer, I would never have any free time.”

“Oh. Well.” She tapped something into her data-pad and held it out for him. “You might want to make time for this.”

**BREAKING NEWS: CMO Goes Behind Senate’s Back, Opens Dead End Clinic**

* * *

Orion’s joints ached terribly.

None of the shots the two bots took at him landed too terribly, but the combination of a fight, carrying a dying bot, and rushing through the streets of the Dead End at his top speed to get the bot to Ratchet’s clinic had left him sore all over. He didn’t dare look through Ratchet’s medical supplies for something to ease the ache, lest he misplace something and incur Ratchet’s wrath.

Half a vorn had passed since the bot’s surgery, and Orion had seen himself out when Ratchet began to reinstall the bot’s plating. It had turned from a daring surgery into a matter of keeping an eye on the bot to see if the healing took. Ratchet had to be finishing cleaning up by now. Maybe Orion could ask for something…

The surgery bay found Ratchet having already cleaned up his tools. The medic leaned against one of the counters along the wall, his arms crossed in front of him, a frown on his faceplates as he looked down at the dying bot.

Orion stepped quietly into the room. “Do you know if he will survive yet?”

Ratchet’s gaze didn’t leave the bot. “Not yet. The anesthetic should be wearing off soon. If he can talk, that’ll be a start.”

There was a pause, and Orion dared to ask, “And after that?”

The gears in Ratchet’s jaw ground together. “This is an addiction clinic, and I’m not a psychiatrist. I can’t exactly help him get off circuit boosters.” His hands flexed slightly, and Orion could imagine the feeling of helplessness that coursed through him. Orion, too, was helpless in this situation.

Orion looked the bot over. “He looks terrible.”

“Well, that may be because he’s in a terrible state.” Ratchet sighed. “His joints aren’t connected properly, his gears are rusted, he’s got a plethora of open wounds that would make perfect sites for viruses to take hold. And that’s just what I can see from looking at him. I barely want to know what his other internals look like.”

“You could keep him here,” Orion said. Ratchet began to protest, but he added, “Just for a while. Just to look him over more thoroughly.”

Ratchet shook his head. “I’m running a medical clinic, not a shelter.”

“I’m not saying you should let him stay forever,” Orion said. “Just until you can get him fixed up. Then you can let him go knowing he has a chance.” Orion gestured to the bot – really, just some scraps of metal thrown together. “He won’t last like this.”

“I try not to think about what happens to them after I let them go, thank you,” Ratchet said.

“I could help,” Orion offered. “If he gives you trouble.”

Ratchet’s optics dimmed in thought. “If I let one stay, the others will start to want to stay as well.”

“So don’t tell them you’re letting him stay,” Orion said. “Make him an assistant while he recovers. I know you spend vorns organizing patient files or cleaning tools. Couldn’t any bot do that?”

Ratchet covered his optics with a servo. “I feel confident if I let him back onto the streets in his state, he’ll die for sure. From what I saw alone, half his internals are beyond use. I’ll half to replace most of his external plating. It’s a miracle he hasn’t gone offline already.”

“Maybe he was _meant_ to find you.”

“Orion, don’t you _fragging_ _start_.”

Orion did, eventually, ask for something for his aching joints, and that led to a needlessly long overall exam as Ratchet scrutinized every inch of his frame for battle wounds or strained cables or anything else he could think of. It came down to a salve of healing nanites and a stern talking-to about his willingness to rush into battle against two armed opponents.

Luckily, a groan from the berth and the grinding of rusting gears forced into motion cut Ratchet off before he could reach his stride.

The young bot had forced himself into a sitting position, and given the amount of anesthetics he had been under and the extensiveness of his surgery, Ratchet could admit he was a little shocked. The bot’s yellow optics were dim and flickering slightly as he forced himself to remain conscious. A spiderweb fracture speared out from the corner of his right optic. Slowly, they came into focus on Ratchet’s image.

“Where am I?” His voice was staticky, the effects of a cheap vocalizer already worn down. Ratchet couldn’t help but notice the hoarseness as well, and wondered when the last time he actually ate was.

Ratchet had done this a hundred times before. He had his speech at the ready – get close, but not into their personal space, place a servo on their shoulder, smile like he believed it, and say, “_Listen to me. I saved your life today. What happens next is up to you. Get a Paint ‘n’ Polish and visit the Functionists downtown – see if they can match you up with a job. You’re special – I can tell. Now get out there and prove me right._”

Ratchet had stopped believing that after he passed the greyed husk of one of his first patients on his drive to the clinic. He stopped believing in the Functionists when too many bots came crawling back with new injuries, some with apologies that the Functionists hadn’t helped and they let him down. Ratchet never liked them in the first place, and there was only so many times he could patch up the same bots they left behind before they succumbed to their circumstances.

Orion was right. He wasn’t ready to lose another one.

“You’re at my clinic.” Before the bot could protest, Ratchet said, “Free of charge.”

The bot stared at him. “You fixed me.” He touched a servo to the side of his helm, as though making sure it really was intact.

“No help from you,” Ratchet groused. “Who in the Pit puts circuit boosters in their helm?”

“Ratchet,” Orion said warningly.

Ratchet raised a servo in placation. “Fine. As it stands, you’re still in terrible shape. Just because your processor is still functional doesn’t mean the rest of you is. Give me a few cycles and I can fix you up. You’re welcome to stay.”

Orion was staring at Ratchet with wide, glowing optics. The bot, however, looked terrified. His optics shone almost white in fear.

“I don’t have any money,” he said quietly.

“I told you, I’m not looking for payment,” Ratchet said. “If you leave – and you’re welcome to – you won’t make it far in the state you’re in. I’m just offering to fix you.” There was a pause, and Ratchet glanced at Orion, and added, “If you really want to repay me, you can help out around here.”

“I can… stay here?”

“Yeah, kid, you can stay here.” After a moment, Ratchet added, “You’re special – I can tell. Now prove me right.”

And, for once, he almost believed it when he said it.


	3. Chapter 3

When Ratchet said the bot could stay in his clinic, he figured – from the way the bot’s gaze hardly left the floor except to stare at him in intermittent intervals – that he would make himself scarce. Probably find a small closet or some other closed-off dark space and recuperate. Ratchet had dragged distrustful bots out of odd corners for as long as he had the clinic, and he assumed this young bot would be much the same.

He did not expect the bot to leap up the moment he went to leave the room, and only the sound of a surgical weld opening kept him from berating the bot. Ratchet tried not to say anything too mean as he re-welded the wound shut. As soon as he was done, and he stood up to leave, the bot stood up as well – slower, this time. He was learning.

Ratchet figured he would investigate his room, so he stepped into the hall, with the bot’s file in hand, and headed for his desk. Of course, in the early evening hush, he picked out the sound of quiet pedes falling into step behind him.

He turned around and saw the bot – now considerably paler, but just a step behind him – leaning against the wall in a way that was less casual, more I’m-about-to-pass-out.

Ratchet grabbed him before his knees fully buckled. Despite not being much shorter than Ratchet – counting finials – he weighed worryingly light. “Idiot,” Ratchet huffed, hauling him back toward the room. “Keep being stubborn, and I’ll cuff your servo to the berth.”

“Promise?” the bot said cheekily.

Ratchet dumped him onto the slab and started to turn around.

“Wait!” the bot said, sitting back up. “Where are you going?”

“You think you’re the only one getting treated today, princess?” Ratchet said. “I have other patients to check up on.”

“I’ll help you,” the bot said.

Ratchet huffed. “You can barely walk. You just had surgery.” Regardless, the bot swung a leg over the side of the slab, and Ratchet pushed him until his back hit the slab. “_Sit down_.”

“I’m _laying down_ now, doc. I can’t _sit_ unless you let go.”

“Don’t call me _doc_.”

“Okay, sweetspark.”

Ratchet wanted to be annoyed – he really did. But there was a teasing grin on the bot’s faceplate, and a faint yellow glow back in his cracked optics, and for the first time that cycle, Ratchet felt like the bot was really _waking up_. He looked nice when he smiled. If circumstance hadn’t put him where Ratchet found him, he probably could have had a good life, with the frame of a well-built racer and a pretty face. If the Functionists actually gave a damn, they probably could have helped him.

Ratchet leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms. “What happened to the optic anyway?” he asked.

The bot looked confused. “My optics?”

Ratchet cocked an orbital ridge. “Yeah. They’re the little orbs on your faceplate that you see out of. How did you crack the right one?”

The bot started to raise a servo before dropping it again. “I’m not sure,” he said. He looked at Ratchet. “How can you tell it’s cracked?”

“Because I’m looking right at the fracture.” Ratchet frowned. “You can’t be seeing well out of that.”

“I can see fine.”

“Yeah? Lights look normal to you? No weird flare lines in your vision? No static?”

Now the bot was frowning too. “The lines aren’t normal?” After a pause, he added, “What are the lights _supposed_ to look like?”

Ratchet held back a sigh. He had other patients. Maybe only two, and one of them had a hovering conjunx who would get him if something went wrong, but… he couldn’t just spend the entire cycle fixing up everything on this bot. Pit, it would probably take him longer than a cycle to do every repair this bot visibly needed from the outside. But a bot who couldn’t see well was a liability around medical supplies, or so he told himself.

“I have some optic glass,” Ratchet said slowly. “I can replace them.”

The bot stared at him like he was waiting for a catch. “I can’t pay you back for the glass,” he said.

“I’m not asking you to pay me for the glass, or the berth, or any of the lines I replaced in your chassis,” Ratchet said.

“Then what do you want?”

“You, to stay in this berth for five fragging kliks while I get the glass.”

Slowly, a smile started to cross the bot’s faceplate. “I think I might be able to manage. Can’t make any promises, though.”

Ratchet returned faster than that, two sets of optical glass in his servos. He directed the bot to lie back. “Turn off your optics and the pain sensors around them. This will only take a few kliks.”

The bot did as Ratchet instructed, and Ratchet immediately set to work. The bot’s optics were thin and covered in miniscule cracks. Ratchet had operated on far worse, but that didn’t make this particular fix any easier. How any bot could see out of those and not notice something was wrong was beyond him.

As he set about installing the new optics, he said, “So what’s your designation anyway, kid?”

“Drift,” the bot murmured after a moment. “My designation is Drift.”

“You sure about that? Bots don’t normally hesitate when asked their designation.”

“Nobody’s really asked for mine before,” Drift said.

The left optic was replaced. Ratchet moved to the right and began scanning for any signs of damage that may have extended from the broken optic. “When did you online?”

“No idea.”

“You have no idea how old you are?”

“It’s all… hazy.”

Ratchet reached for the right optic glass. “Any family?”

Drift just shook his helm.

“Friends?”

There was another pause. “One,” Drift said. “Gasket. He… took me in, I guess. I owe a lot to him.”

“Sounds like a good mech.” Ratchet sealed the optic glass into place. He pushed his chair back and stood up. “Try onlining your optics now. _Slowly_.”

There was a brief flicker in his left optic while the right remained dark. Blue light crept in incrementally, first filling the left and taking more time on the right. Drift offlined his optics and turned them back on. His gaze fixed on Ratchet, and Ratchet tried not to wither under his unrelenting stare.

“This is what it looks like?” Drift said.

“I take it you’re seeing better now,” was all Ratchet said. “How is it?”

“Beautiful.” His voice was reverent, even with the staticky glitch still present. That would be next on Ratchet’s list, he decided. Followed by replacing… oh, a good half of his frame or so, and probably most of his internal wiring.

“Now that you can see,” Ratchet said, “if I give you a data-pad, can you keep yourself entertained for a few kliks while I check on the rest of my patients?”

It was almost like the bot had forgotten how to talk now. His optics were still fixed on Ratchet, and he nodded.

“I have a few in my office. Old gifts. I can bring the box in and you can have your pick of the—”

“Hey, Ratchet, there’s—”

Offshoot’s voice broke off into a staticky gasp as Drift sprang out of the berth, a surgical blade in his hand. Ratchet was forcibly shoved behind Drift’s frame, which was trembling under the effort of standing, but the servo holding the blade was deathly still and trained at Offshoot. Offshoot’s servos went up immediately and he backed into the hall.

“Put that down!” Ratchet snapped, shoving Drift’s arm down. He felt Drift start to raise it again as Offshoot took a step toward them, so he kept an arm around Drift’s front, his servo holding down Drift’s arm, as he said, “Offshoot, you can come in.”

Offshoot peeked into the room, but he didn’t cross the door’s threshold. “I’m good out here, doc.”

“_Don’t call me that_.”

Ratchet looked back at Drift, at the surgical blade in his hand that had clearly been used but not cleaned like the others. “Where did you even _get_ that?” he asked. “I put all my tools up.”

Drift kept staring at Offshoot. Offshoot’s servos were still held up in a mockery of placation.

Ratchet sighed and let go of Drift, since he didn’t seem to be fighting him anymore. Drift immediately fell back against the berth, the surgical blade still gripped in his servo. His optics were glowing too brightly, and the last thing Ratchet wanted to do was put the same weld on his chassis back together for the _third_ time that cycle when he inevitably sprung up again.

“This is Offshoot,” Ratchet said slowly, gesturing to the faded yellow and green bot. “I have his conjunx, Outburst, in a room down the hall. They’re not a threat.”

“Is _he_ a threat?” asked Offshoot.

Drift was still staring down Offshoot, as though Ratchet suddenly didn’t exist. “Dunno,” Ratchet said loudly. “Why don’t you ask him?”

Offshoot’s gaze flickered between them. “Nah, I’m good,” he said. “Don’t think he likes me that much. Speaking of not liking me that much right now, Outburst was trying to—”

“I’ll be right there,” Ratchet said. He stepped forward to stand in front of Drift and held out his servo. “Knife.”

Drift’s glare softened somewhat. “What if someone tries something?”

“We’re in a nigh impenetrable building in the middle of the Dead End. Nobody is getting in here unless I let them in.”

“What if you let in someone bad?” Drift asked.

“Then they won’t bother with a half-dead bot like you. Knife. _Now_.”

“What if they go after _you_?”

“You’re sweet, kid, but I can defend myself. _Knife_.”

Drift finally seemed to come around to the idea that – however much doubt he had in Ratchet – he wasn’t going to win this argument. He raised his servo slowly and uncurled his grip around the surgical blade, dropping it lightly in Ratchet’s waiting servo. Ratchet hurriedly tucked it in his subspace.

He started to leave the room before he paused once more. “If it makes you feel better,” he said, “there are chairs by the door. You can make yourself useless sitting guard if you want.”

And Ratchet left the room, assured that Drift would be there waiting when he returned from dealing with Outburst, because there was no way after that exertion he had the strength to drag his battered frame into the lobby.

* * *

Stubbornness was one of the few positive traits Drift considered himself in possession of. As soon as the sound of Ratchet’s pedesteps faded away, he pushed his legs off the medical berth. The force of his pedes hitting the ground sent a surge of pain through his newly welded chassis, but it was far from the worst thing Drift had powered through. His processor spun from the combination of new sensory data from his optics and the aftereffects of the anesthetics. It was a little dizzying as he struggled to put one pede in front of the other, but after a few steps, he became used to the periodic spinning of the room.

He stepped into the hall with as much silence as he could muster. He could hear Ratchet’s gruff voice speaking from a few rooms down, drowning out the protesting whine of a second voice. Aside from that – and the background whirring of the building’s struggling power – there was no noise at all. His own steps, trained in quietly slipping out of places without disturbing potentially light-sleeping clients, didn’t make a noise.

He found his way back into the lobby easily enough. He may have been mostly unconscious when the police bot brought him in, but time spent on the streets of the Dead End had solidified his ability to remember a way back somewhere, no matter how out of it he was.

It wasn’t the most comfortable of places, and it did made Drift long for the room the medical berth offered again, but it was better than being holed up somewhere he would be trapped if something went wrong. The medic seemed strong enough – he had held Drift back – but there were bots who were better trained than Drift. How this place had managed to survive this long was a miracle, but Drift wasn’t planning on lowering his guard any time soon. Just because no one had attacked didn’t mean no one will. Drift didn’t plan on letting anyone strip him of the one good thing that had come into his life so soon.

One of the first things he had done upon entering the lobby – alongside counting the exits and checking the steadfastness of the window barriers – was make sure the door was locked. It had been. So it was quite a shock to him when the light flashed green and the lock chirped compliantly.

The door slid open to reveal the tall, lithe figure of a seeker. He was decorated in the same red and white colors as Ratchet, though that was about as comforting as seeing a turbofox painted the same colors let loose in a hospital. Blue optics peered contemptuously down over a sharp nasal ridge.

Drift wished he had had the foresight to take more than a single blade from Ratchet’s surgical toolkit.

“Who are—?” Drift began.

The bot held up a servo to silence him. “Where,” he drawled, “is Ratchet?”


	4. Chapter 4

“We need to talk.”

“No, _I_ need to replace a rusted fuel tank.”

Pharma refused to be dissuaded. He stepped in front of Ratchet before he could make his escape back down the hallway, his wide red wings taking up the entirety of the space between the counter and the wall. He was a large, imposing figure in the lobby, making the empty space seem quite small in comparison.

Pharma was quiet for a moment, and then he made a derisive sound under his vents. “You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, because _you_ haven’t told me anything besides that I should _go home_.”

Pharma produced a data-pad from his subspace and thrust it into the Ratchet’s servos. “Then why don’t you take a look?”

Ratchet turned on the data-pad and studied it for a long moment.

**BREAKING NEWS: CMO Goes Behind Senate’s Back, Opens Dead End Clinic**

“Scrap.”

“You said no bot would find out about this place,” Pharma said heatedly. “You promised me. That was the _deal_, Ratch.”

“Well it wasn’t like I knew who the bot was when I let him in! Metaljaw brought him; I assumed he was just some well-to-do type sniffing around the wrong areas of town.” It would be far from the first time some city-bot drifted down to the Dead End in search of excitement only to be terrified out of their wits the moment they encountered a mech with Metaljaw’s build. Ratchet had fixed up dozens and sent them on their way without incident. There had been no reason to think this last mech, this Viewfinder, would be any different.

“You assumed wrong, and now we have to deal with _this_.” Pharma’s finger hit the data-pad in Ratchet’s servo hard enough to almost knock it to the floor.

Ratchet drew back. “The Dead End Clinic is mine. You can see yourself out at any time.”

“Which you should as well!” Pharma snapped. “This place is going to blow up in your faceplates. Now you have the better part of Cybertron venting down your neck as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if they called you before the Senate! When this place fails, do you want it to drag you down with it?”

Ratchet tried not to roll his optics. “Don’t be dramatic. Bots have tried to steal from me before. I can handle myself.”

“I’m not worried about the Primus-damn leakers!” Pharma shouted. It reverberated around the empty room and down the bare halls. Ratchet heard a bot – probably Offshoot – drop something in the far room.

“Don’t yell in my clinic,” Ratchet snapped.

“Don’t drag me down with you on your little suicide mission!” Pharma retorted. “We’re conjunxed! _Everything_ you do reflects on me as well. You think I want to be associated with this place? With pleasurebots and leakers and addicts? I treat real mechs – _important_ mechs who are worth something. I don’t want my patients looking at me and associating me with this place, with _these_ mechs.”

Ratchet threw his servos up. “What do you want me to do? Just shut it all down? Leave bots to die on my doorstep?”

“_Yes_! Because everything you do here _doesn’t matter_! All it does is lessen my standing, distance me from my associates, and get odd looks tossed my way by our staff in the real hospital. You’re not doing a thing here except hurting us. And for what?”

“They’re living mechs, Pharma. Just—”

“I’m your _conjunx_!” Pharma hissed. “_I’m_ supposed to come first.” Pharma drew back and took a harsh vent. His voice was alarmingly calmer when he said, “Though, really, I shouldn’t be surprised. I haven’t come first in your life for a long time now.”

Ratchet sighed. “You really want to do this now?”

“When else would I do it?” Pharma asked. “You’re either working at the hospital or here. At the hospital, it’s unprofessional. At least here there’s no one respectable around to hear.”

“Didn’t this whole problem come up because someone happened to hear something here?”

Pharma said, “You can’t undo what’s already come out. What you do from here reflects on me as well, and given my family’s standing in Vos, I have twice as much to lose as you do. Is it too much to ask that, for once, you put your conjunx first?”

“Over the literal _lives_ of others?”

“What about _my life_?” Pharma went to take a step forward, to close the distance between them, but his pede hadn’t even touched the ground in front of Ratchet when another bot was suddenly in his space. Drift pushed him back with a servo to his cockpit, and Pharma swiftly recoiled from his space.

Pharma quickly steadied himself and fixed Drift with an icy blue glare. “Who the Pit are you?”

* * *

Ratchet had shooed Drift out of the lobby the instant he rounded the corner of the hallway. Recognition had flickered in his optics, alongside an emotion Drift couldn’t quite place, and he sent Drift sulking to the back. He never did clarify where in the back Drift had to stay.

Offshoot saw Drift leaning around the edge of the door to his hab. “You shouldn’t go out there,” Offshoot warned, as Drift put a pede across the threshold. “Doc won’t be happy if you get between him and the conjunx.”

Drift did pause then. “Conjunx?”

Offshoot nodded. “Some well-off bot from Vos. Second-best doc on Cybertron, next to ours.”

Drift recalled the bot’s pristine white and shining red plating, without a scuff or a chip on it, and he just drawled, “Yeah. Sure.”

He crossed into the hallway, his pedesteps faint and unobtrusive over the muffled sound of conversation from the lobby. There were two doors down from Offshoot’s hab – one was the suite where Ratchet had patched Drift up, and the other was a bright room with a door slightly ajar, much closer to the lobby. From the door’s angle, Drift could see inward, and a half-filled energon cube sat at the edge of a small table pushed into the corner. Probably Ratchet’s office. It would have been right behind the unused desk in the lobby.

The scuff of a pede against the floor made Drift stop. He turned around to see Offshoot stepping into place beside him, his optics bright. “Where are you going?”

“Checkin’ on sweetspark, obviously.”

Offshoot started to say something, but then a voice from the lobby snapped, “That was the _deal_, Ratch.”

Drift’s thoughts spiraled in two directions. One – Ratchet was in trouble. He had made a promise to the wrong bot and now something bad was going to happen to him. Drift had seen what remained of bots who crossed the wrong mech once. That would never happen to Ratchet, not after all he had done. Drift had new optics, new fuel lines, and a new lease on life, and he would be damned if anything happened to the mech who gave that to him. Secondly – Ratch was a cute nickname. It would be better with a little personality though. Maybe… Ratty.

Drift grabbed Offshoot by the servo and pulled him into the room with the ajar door. Their pedesteps were concealed by the ensuing volley of statements between Ratchet and this mech.

The room was brightly lit with ceiling lights and a lamp situated on the table with the energon. A bookcase scattered with data-pads was pressed against the far wall. A well-loved chair was pushed to the center of the room from its place against the table. Another shelf – smaller, complete with some compartments with cabinets – sat across from the data-pad shelf. There were small vials and towering bottles of various colors. Drift pulled a familiar one off the top shelf. High-grade, with a very old date on the tag and a seal still on the top.

He paused when a shout split the air. “I’m your _conjunx_!” Pharma was saying. “_I’m_ supposed to come first.”

Drift snorted, and Offshoot shot him a worried look. “What a piece of work,” Drift said, moving to stand closer to the door.

Pharma’s voice dropped back to a moderate volume. “Though, really, I shouldn’t be surprised. I haven’t come first in your life for a long time now.”

“Ratchet puts up with this tool?” Drift said. He looked at Offshoot, but the other mech just shrugged.

“They’ve been together a lot longer than this place has been around,” Offshoot offered.

“That other mech didn’t look so old.”

“Think they met while he was in med school in Iacon,” Offshoot said. He held his servos up. “I wouldn’t know, though. I keep my servos out of that mess right there.”

Drift peered around the edge of the door into the lobby. Ratchet had his arms crossed in front of his chest, an optical ridge cocked and a fiery glow in his optics. So Drift keenly noticed when Pharma began to move and the view was partly blocked, and then he was thinking at all, he was just moving, because he recognized that stance from too many encounters gone wrong.

As soon as he was in front of Ratchet, he shoved Pharma back – not too hard, because the last thing he needed was Ratchet to jump on his case from behind, but enough to send him back two steps further than he had been before. Pharma seethed. “Who the Pit are you?” he bit out.

Before Drift could respond, Ratchet grabbed him by the forearm and shoved him out of the way. “He’s just a patient,” Ratchet said.

Pharma glared at Drift for a moment. “Whatever,” he said. He stepped around Ratchet. “You don’t have to bother coming home this cycle.”

After the doors shut behind Pharma, and the automatic locks clicked into place, silence filled the lobby. Drift slouched, waiting for the scolding, but it never came. Ratchet just looked tired. Quietly, Offshoot stepped out of the office.

Offshoot looked half-ready to bolt. “You good, doc?”

Ratchet covered his faceplate with his servo. His processor hurt like the Pit. “How much did you hear?”

“Not a thing, doc,” Offshoot said quickly.


End file.
